Don't want to sit at home watching the primary returns, biting your nails and pulling your hair? The National Book Critics Circle is sponsoring events in fifteen cities where people meet up and talk about what they're reading.

The L.A. one is tonight at Skylight Books at 7:30.

1818 N. Vermont Ave.7:30 PM: (323) 660-1175

(If you're somewhere else check the NBCC website for your city's details.)

At Skylight you can join poet Amy Gerstler and novelists Katherine Taylor and Darcy Cosper, for a discussion about reading, recommendations and how books travel one person to the next.

Also, here' the NBCC Winter List of books you should check out.

Fiction

1. Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson (FSG)

2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (Riverhead)

3. Diary of a Bad Year, by J.M. Coetzee (Viking)

4. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

5. Zeroville, by Steve Erickson (Europa)

Nonfiction

1. The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross (FSG)

2. Brother, I'm Dying, by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)

3. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press)

4. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks (Knopf)*

5. The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein (Metropolitan)*

Poetry

1. Elegy, by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)

2. Time and Materials, by Robert Hass (Ecco)*

3. Gulf Music, by Robert Pinsky (FSG)*

4. The Collected Poems, 1956-1998, by Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco)

5. Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow (Harper)

Finally, if you're already a member of GoodReads social networking site (It's like a MySpace for readers), become our friend! .

We'll have links to L.A. Weekly book articles as well as info on good author readings, library events and so on. And if you haven't checked out GoodReads but are still reading this, you should sign up now. You'll like it.

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